&c.

PART THE FIRST.

THE SENSUAL MAN.

His Solace.

COME, let us be merry, and rejoice our souls, in frolic and in fresh delights: let us screw our pampered hearts a pitch beyond the reach of dull-browed sorrow: let us pass the slow-paced time in melancholy charming mirth, and take the advantage of our youthful days: let us banish care to the dead sea of phlegmatic old age: let a deep sigh be high treason, and let a solemn look be adjudged a crime too great for pardon. My serious studies shall be to draw mirth into a body, to analise laughter, and to paraphrase upon the various texts of all

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delights. My recreations shall be to still pleasure into a quintessence, to reduce beauty to her first principles, and to extract a perfect innocence from the milkwhite doves of Venus. Why should I spend my precious minutes in the sullen and dejected shades of sadness? or ravel out my short-lived days in solemn and heart-breaking care? Hours have eagleswings, and when their hasty flight shall put a period to our numbered days, the world is gone with us, and all our forgotten joys are left to be enjoyed by the succeeding generations, and we are snatched we know not how, we know not whither; and wrapt in the dark bosom of eternal night. Come then, my soul, be wise; make use of that which gone, is past recalling, and lost, is past redemption: eat thy bread with a merry heart, and gulp down care in frolic cups of liberal wine. guile the tedious nights with dalliance,

uş,

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